People are surprised when I tell them that "Ground Hog Day" is my favorite film. I think it's a masterpiece, practically perfect, and very profound. A lot of other folks think its a no-big-deal comedy. Just a vehicle for Bill Murray to do his shtick.
But then I'm not altogether alone here. In a recent issue of THE WEEK, there was this little item:
Every February, the Philadelphia Meditation Center hosts a screening of the 1993 Bill Murray comedy Goundhog Day. To Buddhists, Murray's portrayal of a jaded weatherman stuck in an endlessly repeating day illustrates the concept of samsara, the eternal cycle of birth and rebirth. "It's a very Buddhist movie," says Ken Klein of the Tiebetan Buddhist Center of Philadelphia.
I've used this film with students-- twice with groups of bright high school seniors about to graduate, and once with an adult class of about ten mature and intelligent people-- because I think its teaching is very deep and profound. And to me the teaching is a Christian one.
Well, if it resonates deeply with both Buddhist and Christian perspectives, there must be something important going on here, no?
In Ground Hog Day, for those who don't know, this TV-weatherman, who is unpleasant and arrogant (but also extremely witty, in a cutting kind of way), is forced to live the same day over and over again --waking up every morning with memory of all the previous ways he's lived it, and how they failed to bring him and fulfillment-- until he gets it right. Which is a very long time because his whole way of looking at the world, of conceiving his place in the world, of treating the world, is so screwed up.
He's got tons to unlearn and tons more to learn.
And it doesn't come easy. This man persists in his spiritually benighted and losing ways until he goes through the deepest, suicidal despair. But then he finally hits that place --of despair but also of surrender-- where Christian miracles happen, and where he does change.
Through the process of error and failure, he eventually grows into a different kind of person, into something much more useful to the world, and much more beautiful for the world to behold. And a part of that beauty is that the arrogance has become humility, and the selfishness has become a life of service. A story of redemption and transformation, brilliantly and hillariously told.
Like I said, my favorite movie.
And lately, I've been having this fantasy about America going through its own kind of Ground Hog Day experience, of Americans being compelled to keep going back over the past six years. I'd like to see America keep redoing it all until we as a nation learn where we went wrong, and until we learn a new way of being from which we get it right.
Reliving to relearn.
As in the Bill Murray flick, the only way to get out of the nightmare of the continual disappointment of one's hopes would be to have a complete change of heart.
The only way to get what you want is to be spiritually transformed into someone who isn't just about getting what he wants.
I'd like to see it. But I can't figure out just how such an American Ground Hog Day would go, scriptwise, just how the film would unfold.
Maybe the movie would follow a handful of representative characters --the way INDEPENDENCE DAY did-- to illustrate the different odysseys by which transformation and enlightenment is gained by different groups of American with important lessons to learn. I would love to see such a voyage traversed by one of those good Christians who care deeply about what's right but bought the image of false righteousness by which the evil Bushites conned them.
Andrew Bard Schmookler's website www.nonesoblind.org is devoted to understanding the roots of America's present moral crisis and the means by which the urgent challenge of this dangerous moment can be met. Dr. Schmookler is also the author of such books as The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution (SUNY Press) and Debating the Good Society: A Quest to Bridge America's Moral Divide (M.I.T. Press). He also conducts regular talk-radio conversations in both red and blue states.
I've felt stuck in the Groundhog Day Loop all my adult life.
You see I came of age in the Nixon impeachment-oil embargo-peace protest-Israeli war-Vietnam-inflation years;
and lived through the Reagan-oil embargo-peace protest-South American wars-Lebanon bombing-inflation-Clinton impeachemtn;
and now I'm enduring the Bush years (need I elaborate?)
and I want to stop the world and get off (circa 1961) and live in a time when the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, and protest seem quaint and old-fashioned.
by
KarenDetroit (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 19 comments)
on Thursday, March 1, 2007 at 8:35:48 AM
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